Apps to aid mental health range from those that track a person’s mood to ones that help with mindfulness.
Photograph: Alamy

It doesn’t matter what the problem is, someone will have developed a app to deal with it – so it should come as no surprise that there are now thousands of apps that promise to improve your mental health and wellbeing. But do they work?

Most apps, says Tomlin, are targeted at common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, but increasingly there are apps for people with more serious conditions, such as bipolar disorder. Appropriate apps, he says, can be hard to find: “If you go to the App Store and browse in the health and wellbeing section, what you’ll get is a ton of yoga and sex apps.”

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That is not to say that apps cannot be useful. Eve Critchley, head of digital at mental health charity Mind, says those offering access to online peer support are particularly valuable for anyone who feels daunted by the thought of picking up a phone or seeing a therapist: “For people who are socially isolated or less able to engage in face-to-face support, it may be preferable to use something that you can use privately or anonymously.”

Mind has its own mental health app, Elefriends, with access to an online community of peer support. It has been downloaded more than 13,000 times. “We hear lots of people say that was their first experience of either seeing someone else talk frankly about mental health,” says Critchley, “or of being able to talk about mental health and feeling understood and accepted.”

Other useful apps, she says, range from those that track a person’s mood or use techniques such as mindfulness, to apps such as Stay Alive that offer crisis support for people with suicidal feelings. Some people, Critchley adds, find it helpful to use a smartphone simply as a journal to record feelings.

So how can you find the most helpful apps? The best, says Tomlin, are those that have involved both clinicians and people with the relevant mental health condition in development. In the UK there is no system of accreditation, although the NHS has launched a test library of apps for both mental and physical health, which are expected to go live in early 2018. The plan is that some of those apps will be certified as NHS-approved. To this end, the NHS has created a questionnaire for app developers that will help determine whether an app meets the criteria.

The biggest challenge is evaluating clinical effectiveness and NHS England has talked to patients and organisations, such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, to establish “what good looks like” before an app can be approved. It is a rigorous process, says Juliet Bauer, chief digital officer at NHS England: “If we want to recommend them to the public, we need to know that they’re safe and secure, and effective and easy to use.”

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Catch It: helps you capture and understand your mood using a journal. Free on the App Store and Google Play.